Nursing Home Moves Man’s wife 1,000 miles away

A St. Augustine, Florida man says that on Christmas Eve, his 65-year-old wife was moved to an Illinois nursing care center in Elmwood, without his approval or knowledge. Viola Jane White, 65, has been a patient at Kindred Hospital in Green Cove Springs, west of Jacksonville. She needs dialysis and a ventilator to live. Christmas eve, William White got a call from the hospital that his wife had been flown to Illinois.

What angers him is that the hospital staff decided that they didn’t need her husband’s approval to go.
“They said she agreed to it. She can’t even sign her name. She don’t know what day it is,” White said to First Coast News. White got a letter last September stating that his wife’s Medicaid and Medicare benefits would be exhausted by mid-November. In order to stay at Kindred Hospital, White would have to come up with $1,000 a day.

But a federal program to serve the elderly should not be dictated by state. White says he was told the only option for his wife was to move out-of-state so she could receive Medicaid and Medicare.

“I said I don’t agree to send my wife 1,000 miles away. I’m 72 years old!” White said, adding that he doesn’t know when he’ll get to see her again.

Professional intervention is needed here. Patients and their families express their wishes in writing to a nursing home or care facility and to violate those wishes, whether they be end of life issues or basic rights to fair and decent treatment cannot and should not be violated without consequences.

If you or someone you know has been the victim of nursing home abuse in Florida, contact the experienced attorneys at Farah and Farah today for a free consultation of your case.